DESCRIPTION
of thin section with slightly flared walls, masterfully painted in Holmul style with a band of three cormorants, each with long neck bent forward and beak slightly open, the wings outspread as if to dry with feathers delineated, a large band of Primary Standard Sequence glyphs above including the vessel was for ul, a corn gruel, and the title balam; in brilliant shades of orange on the white ground.

LITERATURE AND REFERENCES
Dorie Reents-Budet, Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of the Classic Period, Duke University Press, 1994, cat. no. 71 and figs. 5.22 and 6.12, (see bibliography for additional venues of the exhibition)

CATALOGUE NOTE
This vase is an elegant example of the Holmul painting style, showing a finely rendered combination of loose wash and clearly defined areas. The cormorant was a popular bird in Maya iconography, notable for its versatile capability in air, land and water, giving it a supernatural association. This vessel features the bird without a natural habitat, emphasizing its innate qualities; see Reents-Budet (1994: figs. 6.13 and 5.25) for vessels of similar style.

"Given the shamanistic basis of Maya religion with its transformational beings who traverse the various realms of existence, the cormorant makes an ideal symbolic trans-formational representative from the animal kingdom" (ibid:248).